Make this easy Saint Patrick's Day craft from Amanda Formaro with your kids this year. This project uses up all of those old paper bags you have lying around.

Materials:

Brown grocery bag

Acrylic paint in antique gold and Kelly green

Toothbrush

Paintbrush

Fine tip black marker

Pinking shears (or other decorative scissors)

Small material scrap in stripes or other pattern of your choice

2 gold buttons, any shape

Cotton batting (Fiberfil)

White craft glue (Tacky glue)

Gold craft wire

Pencil

Shiny green ribbon

Shiny gold ribbon

Instructions:

Lay brown paper bag on flat work surface. Cut out two large sections from the front and back of the bag. Stack those sections, one on top of the other, then fold them in half. Draw a shamrock, then cut it out with the pinking shears. Or you can use this as a pattern.

Beginning at the bottom of the shamrock, use tacky glue to connect the two layers at the seams, stuffing the shamrock as you go with cotton batting (Fiberfil). Work your way around the edges, carefully stuffing (but not too much!) until shamrock is completely closed. Note: there is not enough room in the shamrock stem, simply glue this together.

When the glue is dry, paint the edges of the shamrock with antique gold paint. When that dries, paint the shamrock green as shown in photo. When the green paint is dry, dip the bristle tips of a toothbrush into the antique gold paint. Test your flecking ability on a piece of scrap paper before doing this on your heart. Hold toothbrush horizontally and drag your thumb across the bristles, causing the paint to fleck spots wherever you aim it. When you are comfortable with this method, go ahead and fleck gold paint across the shamrock to look like gold dust.

When gold paint is dry, use the black finetip marker to write "It's Your Lucky Day!", placing decorative dots at the point of each letter. Draw small double stitch lines around the shamrock approximately 2 or 3 inches apart (see large photo). Use pinking shears to cut out a square from the striped scrap material. Use white glue to adhere the material to the lower right hand corner of your brown bag shamrock. Use white glue to adhere a small gold button to the material scrap. Tie a bow in a piece of shiny gold ribbon, glue it the base of the stem.

Cut a piece of gold craft wire long enough to wrap completely around your shamrock. This should be enough for your hanger. Find the middle of craft wire, wrap the middle section of the wire around a pencil about 6 or 7 times. Pull the pencil out to create the curl at the top of your hanger. Curve the wire into a hanger shape and poke each end carefully through the sides of the shamrock as shown in the photo. Use the skinny end of a small paintbrush to curl the ends of the wire that you poked through.

Using shiny green ribbon, tie a knot onto the craft wire halfway down from where the top curls begin. String both ends of the ribbon through the back of the button, then tie a bow. If your button is flat, tie ribbon in a bow, then use a hot glue gun to glue the second gold button to the center of the bow. Spray the entire shamrock with a coat of acrylic sealant.

Note: It is not necessary to paint the back of the heart, though you may if you like.

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